Definitely no fixed width! You make a good point about notable well-designed sites using fixed with (Apple, Ebay, etc.) but for a forum like this I strongly believe that full-width sites like Amazon and Wikipedia are better examples to emulate.

One bug I've found is that pics don't display in the classifieds listings when in "fluid" mode. And yeah, it's all bright and washed-out looking, harder to read somehow.

But seriously, this seems like a lot of work for little gain and much criticism. I'd much rather see you work on increasing the private message capacity problem or the crazy 10 second waiting period between searches. Bump up the PM box to 2000 messages, implement a full box notification, offer automatic deletion of old messages, and allow 2 or 3 chances at searching before getting the 10 second ban. Leave the forum style alone.

I seem to be missing the contrast in the new versions - text in posts is almost grey and harder on the eyes than the old style - is there some setting I can change to improve the readability? It's not a monitor setting - I have the old version open in another window and it's very distinctly easier to read.

...and I prefer fluid width, but even the 'new' fluid width has 'greyer' text.

As a web developer - this comment could not be more incorrect. Especially in this time of feeding internet content to multiple display formats (desktops, mobile and tablets for instance). Using fluid layouts, or even better - responsive web design, is the way to go to ensure that everyone is viewing the content in a way that works for their media.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TestUser01

Hmmm, well the fluid style is just too bright for me.

I have to agree... would still like to see a bit more contrast between the font color and white background. That semi-light gray is going to get a little tough on the eyes after a while.

I would also like to see a "Top of Page" or something similar at the bottom of the thread. All too often I'm at the bottom of a page reading and have to scroll-scroll-scroll-scroll-scroll back to the top or hit Home on my KB to go back to My RCGroups for instance. A "Top" button is a quick and easy addition and would resolve this usability "problem." Granted I hate "Top" buttons on most sites but on a forum, where I use the navigation at the top quite often - I do like it. Another good option would be to include your header and primary navigation in one DIV that is absolutely positioned to top:0, position:absolute, z-index:9999 and that way the header and navigation would always be visible with the thread/page content scrolling "behind" it. This could also be filtered by media (since iPad doesn't support absolute position correctly) and by screen resolution so that it's not cumbersome on smaller screens such as netbooks.

On a side - non-developer note - I do like the new style though. It's refreshing and also good to see websites working to make improvements. Kudos and thanks for continuing to support our hobby! RCG+!

I don't see any difference between the way the text displays with "fluid width" and the original (W7-64bit and IE9). What am I supposed to see that's different. I DO see the new pages look too bland and less defined without the borders. I may be alone, but the original is easier to read for me. I definitely DON'T like fixed width and DON"T like the change from underlining web links to just making the text blue, which is does not get your attention nearly as much when reading, and a lot harder to spot when scrolling through pages looking for a link. Some people who may be color blind may not even notice the links at all. Please restore the underlining.

For those wanting buttons to go to top/bottom of the page, you can do that with the "Home" and "End" keys, or if you have a wheeled mouse with live clickable wheel, just click on the wheel to set a screen position marker, then move your mouse above or below that mark to scroll in the relative direction. The farther past the mark the pointer goes, the faster the scroll. Mouse to top of window instantly goes to page top, and vice-versa.

I like the new style, can't see any problem with being hard to read either. I didn't try the fixed width style when it was running but both the new versions work well for me, it's good to see the guys at rcg listening to it's members too. I would like to see a go to first unread post button from the thread list or my rcg page, I know there is one in the thread but I feel it would be more use than the go to last post button in the list.